SharperIron

By the end of January 2010, SharperIron will have been on the Web for a full five years. Those years have seen quite a bit of change. At SI, members have come and gone, the moderating team has changed and one owner/publisher has passed the baton to another. And SharperIron’s context has changed as well. Fundamentalism’s self perception has shifted, the Internet has continued to morph. Blogging has passed out of the “amazing new phenomenon” phase and social networking is now familiar to all.

SI is funded from four sources: donations, advertising, Amazon purchases from our links, and what the site’s owner throws in now and then. The first source pays nearly all of SI’s server-related costs. The second has been the largest single source and funds everything from phone bills and PO box rentals to traveling expenses, editing fees (this expense ended during the 2nd quarter of this year), and compensation for article writers (this year this took the form of contest prizes).

Fund drive ends on Friday

As of this writing, about three dozen of you have chipped in to help cover SharperIron’s server and bandwidth costs for 2009 (more info here). A few contributed especially large gifts. You know who you are (though, in some cases, I’m not sure I know who you are). Whether your donation was large or small, I—and all who benefit from SI—thank you for your help!

The complete article database is now online!

Saturday evening, July 25, we were able to successfully migrate more than 900 full length articles and more than 2000 Filings posts into SharperIron 3.0—that’s the entire collection of material from before June 1, ‘09.

Though SharperIron is not organized as a nonprofit, it has never earned a profit. The site basically broke even in 2008, but it had some debt before that. And, so far, 2009 has accumulated a deficit. Though deficit spending seems to be the “in” thing these days, I’d like SI to operate on wiser principles!

The winners of our first-ever SharperIron writing contest have been chosen!

They are John P. Davis for “My Journey Out of Dispensationalism” and Paul J. Scharf for “Why I Am a Dispensationalist.” These contestants will receive prize checks in the mail shortly and their articles will be published here in sequence within a few weeks.

We much appreciate everyone who participated. Several of the other contest entries will be appearing here at SI in the weeks ahead.

The first-ever SharperIron writing contest has ended. Thanks to all of you who participated.

We have several good candidates for the prizes. Two winners will be announced soon.

Congratulations! You’ve made it to SharperIron 3.0.

You’ll have to create a new account for yourself unless you’re one of those I’ve notified that your account has already been created. Please understand that the unusually high volume of new registrations means that it’ll take a while for some of you to get approved.

The site will be offline starting 7:30 AM
for the upgrade to 3.0.

We should be back online by Monday AM June 1.

In order to move to SI 3.0, the site will go offline Thursday morning, May 28. Lord willing, we’ll be back online by Monday morning June 1.